Vascular pattern localization is an analysis of blood vessels patterns beneath the surface of skin, and is a useful tool with a variety of commercial and medical applications. For example, vascular pattern recognition can he used as a technique for biometric identification. However, visibility of vascular patterns in the visible spectrum varies from person to person, and for many people the contrast between vascular and nonvascular regions may be too low for detection in the visible spectrum from still images.
Conversely, near infrared (NIR) imaging produces images with high image contrast between vascular and nonvascular regions. However, NIR imaging requires special illumination sources and specialized NIR cameras that are generally more expensive than visible spectrum cameras.
Accordingly, vascular pattern localization technologies may be improved by techniques for localizing vascular patterns that do not require specialized equipment and lighting.